Mogadishu, (insidesomalia.org) - Protestors in Somalia gathered along a major road on Sunday, demanding that a key official with the United Nations' refugee agency be released unconditionally.

The demonstrators gathered along the road linking the capital to Mogadishu to the town of Afgoye, 30km south. That road has been home to hundreds of thousands of people displaced by an anti-Ethiopia insurgency raging in Mogadishu since January 2007.

A spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) confirmed to reporters that Hassan "Keynan" Mohamed, the agency's head of Somalia operations, was kidnapped and that his whereabouts remain unknown.

The identity or motive of the kidnappers has not yet been ascertained, but witnesses said six armed men kidnapped the UN aid worker near his home in the southern outskirts of Mogadishu.

A man who spoke for today's protestors said it is "unimaginable" that an individual giving aid to needy families is kidnapped, adding that protestors will gather daily until he is released unharmed.

Somalia, a Horn of Africa country that has been mired in political chaos and armed conflict since the early 1990s, is considered a dangerous place for aid workers, with several kidnappings-for-profit reported earlier this year.

Last month, a Somali aid worker was shot and killed in the southern port of Kismayo.

Seven aid workers - four of them foreigners from Kenya, Italy and the United Kingdom - are being held captive in Somalia since being kidnapped in April and May.